google and the yahoo fixation

(1) Take a Yahoo! service.
(2) Clean up the UI, remove the ads
(3) Throw some search mojo at it to keep Google a “search company”
(4) Release it to the public.

There’s also part (5), where we watch the service crash repeatedly with cute messages (Orkut, PageCreator, Reader). So much for innovations in scalability. Considering what you expect from the big G, I’m still surprised how I’m yet to see a Yahoo! property ever get overwhelmed. I did once notice the whole of Y!Groups crash and reboot sometime last year, but that’s about it.